Interview with an old Party Cadre

This friday for my one-on-one class I went with my teacher to interview an old Party Cadre that she knows. We walked over to his apartment which is in part of the railroad bureau's compound (its very common for people to live in company housing, especially if the company is older than 20 years) near the center of the city.

As we walked up the typically dirty staircase of their apartment building I didn't know what to expect; because every apartment staircase I've been in is filthy you never know if the apartment is going to be clean but poor or surprisingly lavish. Theirs was very nice but not in an extravagant way, the furnishings were all of high quality but it still seemed a bit spartan in a pleasing way. My first impression upon seeing the Cadre was that he was a rather frail old man, skinny as a stick and wearing rather large glasses. I soon realized that he was a very intelligent man who had an amazing life story to tell.

He was born in 1930 in the second largest city in the province which means he spent most of his childhood and adolescence under Japanese rule. His family were poor peasants (or at least that's what he told me they were classified as during the cultural revolution, lucky for them), and he attended highschool during the communist push into the north east, racing the nationalist party to capture the industrial heartland as the Japanese retreated. When he graduated in 1948 he joined the communist party. This has turned out to be a very profitable decision, as any party members who joined before 1949 now recive twice the amount in old age pension.

He told me about his unshakable faith in Mao during the Great Leap Forward, giving half of his already insuficcient meal ticket to factory workers. Buying an American radio in 1955 for 3 months wages, the first one among his friends to have this new invention. He told me about getting denounced by big character posters at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, since he was the fifth ranked person in his 单位 (work unit) of over 1000 people, and how he was incredibly confused because he still really trusted Mao. But he said he found some solution in his heart, basically that Mao was right and the problems were in the middle levels of the party. He was reinstated after martial law was imposed, shaken by Deng Xiao Ping's denounciation, and especially when he was denounced the second time. He told me about his reaction to the first newspaper article published criticizing Mao, albeit guardedly (Mao was 70% right and 30% wrong, officially), how he wasn't happy but at the same time felt it was important to have more openness.

We talked about his work with the railroad reforms as China modernized, the advising he still does for the railroad and the sorts of 关系 (special relationships) that he still has. We talked about him retiring and his present views on China which were by far the most exciting.

We talked about the present rot in society and in the Party, because during Mao's time there really wasn't much, a point he reminded me of a few times. I asked him if there might be a relationship between having a disciplined and centrally controlled party, and next to no economic growth. He agreed, but turned the question around and said that then there were no opportunities for corruption and every one believed in the Party and socialism. Now it is not like that, there are many opportunities, the center is weaker and the belief in a higher ideal is gone. Then he told me an anecdote which left a deep impression in me, especially because it came from a truly dedicated and intelligent party member. During the war when Mao was still a peasant revolutionary he had an encounter with the leader of a large minority group. They spoke of the great China that Mao would create if he won, and the man told him that every great empire in China had fallen because of decay, so how would Mao prevent that? And Mao replied that the people will always keep decay under control. He said it with a sort of glint in his eyes of someone who's been there and doesn't bother with excuses and I was really surprised that he had chosen to bring up that pointed of an anecdote. A while later, he mentioned that he really approved of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiaobu before him - agree with the leaders but fault the middle layers.

The last instance I want to relate was still talking about rot. He brought up the coal mine accident that happened in May of this year where 56 miners were trapped underground. He was really angered by this, blasting the managers for being inept and only looking at profit. He told me that he knew one of the top managers personally, although somewhat distantly, and that he had written him a letter, a very impolite letter. He had said, 'did you even go into the mine yourself? you had sure as hell listen to Hu Jintao and fix this situation, you had better see that the money the central government is giving you goes towards safety and doesn't end up in somebody's pocket'. He signed it with his full name and former position to give as much weight as he could. He said he doesn't expect a response.

It was a really great interview, about 2 1/2 hours of him telling stories and me interrupting occasionally, to say I understood less than the gist of what he was saying. I wouldn't say that anything he said contradicted what I've read in articles and class about changing politics here, rather confirmed it in an incredibly colorful and real way. Its easy to talk about the flaws of a planned economy. Its much more interesting to talk to someone who truly believes in socialism and Mao Zedong thought, and yet is by no means afraid to ask himself the hard questions of how to make it work and why things didn't work out like they were supposed to.

长白山, 朝鲜 Changbaishan and North Korea (almost)

This weekend marks the halfway point in the summer semester here at CET. To celebrate, we all took a 2 day/3 night trip to the east and south of Harbin to climb a mountain called 长白山 (Changbaishan) on the North Korean border. We spent the night in a hostel (sort of, see below) and then cruised around 延吉 （yanji) which is a border city with North Korea. Most of our roommates were able to come with us and it was an amazing weekend of traveling, China with Korean characteristics and good Chinese practice.

At about 7:00 on Thursday we took the bus to the train station. All I had was a backpack and a sword. Yes, a sword, which I boldly carried in my hand into the station, passed it through the metal detector without batting an eye, and walked onto the train. We boarded the hard sleeper overnight train for Changbaishan, the 30 people in our program taking over most of one of the cars and hanging out in the passageway to the annoyance of the train personel. We were all very excited to be leaving the city for a new place, and our roommates had just finished their final exams so they were obviously happy. At this point you might be saying, 'Morgan, WTF, a sword? Is this Kill Bill!' Never fear, all good things come in time. I spent a while talking with two roommates, Renfeng and (how embarrassing that I forget her name), planning the plot of the kungfu movie that we were going to shoot as we climbed changbaishan, making a plot of love, kungfu skill, mystery and of course all of it way more complicated and illogical than it should be. Needless to say, I was very excited about mountains, movies, traveling and the like and I ended up getting about 2 hours of sleep. I even tried to use a friends cell phone and IP card to call home, on the mistaken assumption that Friday was the 15th, my birthday. No I wasn't drinking anything, just excited.

At 5:30 am we got off the train and met our new tourguides (2 from Harbin plus one local one). All I wanted to do was sleep but the guy from Harbin just wanted to talk to me. He was 23, just graduated from tourguide school and really liked reading history books and watching history movies. He told me a long story about the ancient ethnicities of north eastern china, how different peoples had become different races, which all let up to a story of a war and fued between two families over 300 years ago which was crucially important to the Manchurians taking over the rest of the middle kingdom and as a result these two families, even 300 years later can't inter-marry. (A good point about Chinese politics and 'fued's being played out on a longer time scale than we're used to, read: they might wait 100 years to get Taiwan back but there's not a chance they're going to forget). Of course he told me a lot more but I was way too tired to have him clarify the vocab that I didn't understand. I told him a very bad version of the Indian wars in upstate NY during the French and Indian war after he asked for a similar story from my country.

After breakfast we got back on the bus to drive to Changbaishan. As we approached we were harangued for half an hour by our tourguiedes shrill voice talking about the tree species, cultural significance of changbaishan and that it was perfectly safe because the last erruption was 304 years ago. She then explained that it had erupted several more times in recorded history (which is fairly long here), I forget the other years, but that the local oral history said the mountain would erupt every 300 years. Although I was ready to flee at any moment, no signs of volcanic activity were seen, don't worry. I also learned how to say fun words like volcanic eruption and soapstones, yay Chinese. The bus stopped at the gate, which had huge billboard pictures of themountain, but there was no mountain insight above the tree tops in this flat forest. We walked through the gate and boarded another bus which took us for another 20 minutes on an increasingly steep road that finally arrived at a much bigger mountain than I expected.

Changbaishan is a cauldera very similar to Crater Lake, OR. The ring of mountains are over 2000m (6000 plus feet) with a very large lake, several K accross and over 400m deep at the top. The North Korean border passes very close to the lake, on the opposite side, so I can say I've seen North Korea. The approach climbs up a wide valley caused by the most recent eruption and requires a covered staircase to protect against the loose rocks falling from the high cliffs. The steepest part has a several hundred foot tall water fall which fans out into rolling aspen forests, grey to yellow tinted cliffs giving it a very distinctive feel. There were also some hot springs at the beginning of the trail and the big attraction was eating eggs that had been naturally hard boiled in the springs. They tasted like hardboiled eggs.

As with all mountains in China, the equipment and skills perceived necessary by the climbers varies widely. We wore our sneakers and had packs with water, snacks and sweatshirts. Many people didn't carry anything and wore their leather dress shoes and slacks. I didn't see any skirts so at least most Chinese here were informed that this was a real mountain. Then there were a couple very large groups of Korean tourists who were all decked out in perfectly new, name brand mountain climbing gear and accessories. (hats, glasses, ski poles, packs, special shirts, pants, collapsable chairs, etc) I watched them closely but they didn't attempt any of the scree slopes or peaks, staying on the same stone staircase that everyone else used. Maybe most interesting were several of the Chinese girls on our trip who were genuinely worried that there wouldn't be enough male students around to help them climb the mountain. This perplexed me a lot because they really insisted on male students help and wouldn't accept the help of the capable American females. At first this seemed like a flirting game that students here play a lot, with the girls trying to be extra girly to get their guy friends to be extra macho (or more sensitive and feminine as the case may be). But this went passed friendly flirting and seemed to speak something about the interesting way gender roles are developing, not exactly upholding the capable and independent image of women we're used to in the West. Issues like them all being single children, experimenting with identity and relationships and having even less of a base of cultural precedent that American college students (us) feel at this point in their lives are all intertwined here and I think this is a fascinating aspect of modern culture here. Ok, Enough of that.

The whole time I'm climbing the mountain I'm carrying a sword! You have no idea how great it feels to climb a mountain with a sword at your side! The Chinese comments were hilarious, from 'hello master' to 'is that to protect against tigers?' to 'excellent sword, foreigner, good quality' (note: this is the cheapest taiji sword you can buy, and it was old and borrowed from a friend anyway), at the top one Korean hawker was really excited and really, really wanted to buy it. As much fun as it would be to reverse roles in the bargaining game, I refused on the basis of our kungfu movie not being finished yet.

The movie I'm not going to talk too much about because I'd rather have you watch it (when its finished), but we essentially chose the most beautiful backgrounds possible to carry out our incredibly cheesy kungfu/love story, getting some very interesting looks and having lots of fun.

After mountain climbing we went to a place called the underground forest which is really a sunken volcano crater which has a big forest in it, essentially below the surrounding terrain, home to diverse wildlife and plants. Then we went back up towards the mountain to go to a public shower/hot springs. It was a classy spa, with seperate halves for males and females. Since all our teachers and the older tourguides were female, us guys were left to ourselves, which meant running around like a bunch of naked 10 year olds, splashing, whipping towels, making dumb jokes about inviting the girls over and having a righteous time. Self conscious is not a word I would use to describe our Chinese roommates when there weren't any girls around.

That night we stayed in a 兵官， which literally means 'soldier lodge' but is generally used for more economy hotels or this place which could be called a bed and breakfast. No, not bed, 炕 (kang). 炕 are used all over northern China to sleep on in the winter. It's essentially like sleeping on top of a fireplace. Its built like a large bread oven and you sleep on top, usually rolling your blanket out on top of the bricks, squeezing people in rather tight since it forms the entire floor of 'bedroom' that you step up two feet to get into. Being summer, there was no fire under ours, and it was like sleeping on a thick blanket on a brick floor, so hard but not bad. Before bed four of us (one cool kid from Harbin and three of us Americans) sat out on some sofa's on their porch, watching the stars and telling gost stories and other tales from our lives. It was a very nice night.

The second day we got back on the bus for a four hour ride to the city of 延吉 (yanji)。I some of the Chinese girls taught me a card game, and after of about 10 minutes of struggling with rules and vocab realized it was Hearts with chinese characteristics – just different scoring, and things got much easier. The middle of the drive was highlighted by driving through a very small village which our tourguide explained was predominantly of Korean ethnicity which you could see by how they built their houses and the layout of the town. The bus didn't stop, only slowed down so we could gawk out the windows at these people who had suddenly and unwittingly become a museam attraction to be stared ot through the glass. I havn't been to see other 'chinese ethnic minorities' in China, but from what I hear this is the fairly standard mentality: present a people and their 'ethnic characteristics', take a busload of tourists to see these people and their characteristics and maybe buy some souvineers or buy a few sticks of incense, and of course take lots of pictures. I can't say I felt too comfortable looking out at the people going about their lives, looking slightly confused to see a couple tourbusses driving slowly through.

The city of 延吉 was nice, not too big and just about like most other cities I've been to. There were lots of Koreans selling things, some of it having 'North Korean characteristics' but like tourist items all over the world, most of it was made in China. We wandered through some shops and looked at things, but there really wasn't much here that seemed that interesting when compared to climbing volcanoes. But still, it was my birthday and my friends here weren't about to let me forget it. At dinner, Korean, do-it-your-self BBQ, they rolled out a big cake, complete with a pink, plastic flower/candle that played happy birthday continuously. And like all cakes here, the cake itself was a plain as plain can be, yellow and bland, only made interesting by the visually highly complicated but entirely flavorless frosting. But I'm not complaining, merely explaining. It was a great birthday, thanks to all of you here for attending (ha, it was part of our planned trip, you didn't have a choice)

But I'd also like to say a big hello and thank you to friends and family, literally from all over the world who sent birthday wishes, or who felt facebook.com was too silly and who were still thinking of me. And for those who weren't, I'm more than happy you were doing something exciting enough that home and friends didn't cross your mind. I'm not sure any of use knows what it means to live in a world where we can be in constant contact with friends in China, New Zealand, Nicaragua, France, Pakistan, the entire span of the US, heading off for Russia, Tibet, Uzbekistan, Africa, Lebanon, etc. But even if we don't know, we're sure as hell going to try and find out.

German/South American BBQ

After reading the title of this post, you might be wondering what German cuisine and South American cooking have in common. I'm here to tell you that in Harbin, China, they have found the answer. It is called Hans and it is an incredibly popular restaurant near the center of the city.

Hans is a big multi-story restaurant, just like all the good ones here. In America the better a restaurant is the more likely it is to be small and exclusive, but in China the better a restaurant is the more floors it has. Even with 4 big floors we had to wait to get a table at 6:00 on Tuesday night. We ordered our beers, which is the first time I've found dark beer in China, and they definitely tasted at least a bit German. The waiter was also dressed in something that was supposed to resemble laiderhosen and the posters on the walls all depicted German beer or holidays. But the waiter also wore a cowboy hat, which took me a few glances to realize how out of place it was with the german theme.

It was then explained to me that this is actually South American food. At least in Harbin, South American food means a huge BBQ with long, double pronged skewers that look like a Dr. Suess drawing. The skewers are then brought around by the waiters who place one end of the skewer on your plate (they're about 24 inches long) and then use a very long and sharp knife, inches from your face, to cut off pieces of whatever meat it happens to be. Since they don't give you very much every time, opting instead for variety, this happened at least a dozen times over the hour that we ate. Needless to say I felt bloated from all the meat although it was all very tasty. So if this makes you interested in German/South American food, come to Harbin because its the only place in the world you're going to find it.

帽儿山 - Hat Mountain

Hello all,

Yesterday the planned activity for CET was a dinner out, and I didn't think that was exciting enough, so a friend and I got about 9 of us together and rented a bus to drive us out of the city to go mountain climbing. I'll back up to mention that our teacher helped us rent the bus, but Li Laoshi (the teacher) didn't come, so we were mostly on our own.

We drove about 2 hours out of the city to a place called Maoershan, or Hat Mountain. Most of the drive was on the highway. China's in the middle of building a highway system similar to the US, and in less than 10 years the system is expected to have more miles of dived highway than the US (yikes), this road was certainly one of the earlier ones built and looked about the same as a US road. Combined with the fact that we were driving through a hilly, wooded terrain with tilled fields in the narrow-ish valleys. It felt like Vermont, which is a nice feeling after not even getting to the outskirts a Chinese city for 3 weeks.

We then had to navigate the dirt roads of the 农村 （farming village) at the base of the mountain, asking directions frequently until we arrived at a dirt parking lot next to the cleanest river I've seen in China - about like the Green river or the Ausable river looks, for reference. We walked over the bridge, but you could also drive on a concrete ford that the river flowed over. This was designed to drive your car onto and then you got out into the 4 inches of flowing water and washed your car in the stream. (Luckily I didn't see anyone using soap).

Hat Mountain does not have a ticket price, and considering it has a cobble stone path the entire way I'm not sure why they don't charge. But the hundreds of well dressed (skirts, dress shoes, etc) and well off Harbin'ers wandered up the muddy and at times very steep cobblestone path. There were only a few people selling water or snacks along the way, and no built stalls. There were three guys at the top selling bottle water and poloraid photos, and we chatted with them for a while about this and that. Taiwan came up somehow and I agreed with him that America had been interfering in that aspect of Chinese affairs for 57 years. (note, I don't know what I really think about this issue so I say that here to be polite). He beamed a huge smile and then told me that if I ran for president of the US he would vote for me. He also told me about the town building the cobblestone trail a year ago (presumably to attract more tourists which it certainly has), and how the mountain is being developed, with Chinese characteristics of course.

The mountain itself, geologically speaking (warning: my less than expert opinion), is interesting. It has a very distinctive shape, getting steeper and steeper all the way up to the top which is flat but only about 60-80 meters across. The last 100-200 vertical feet are cliffs or near cliffs. The path used lots of chains bolted to the rocks and steps cut in the rock, and they were definitely necessary. Now if I had to guess, I'd say this might be the core of a fairly old volcano, the lava tubes in the center being of a somewhat harder substance than the older mountain left to stand in this fairly vertical way. Devils tower is the best example of this if you want to picture it. That's the limit of my expertise, next topic.

On the way down, we were taking our time and one of the Korean students came up with the idea of making a CET kungfu movie, so we did. He and I 'fought' in a few different spots, including on a cabble suspension bridge. Then instead of going out last night we stayed in and edited it. If I can figure out how to put it on Youtube.com I will, after I make English subtitles for it of course, and post the link. But for now, we're planning the sequel, to be filmed next weekend when we take our long trip to Changbaishan.

That's all for this condensed version of our Saturday. You can see the facebook.com for photos of course, and drop me a comment here or there to harass me and tell me what you want to hear more about.

Hope you're all well,
-古木军-
-morgan-

Some smaller tidbits I'd like to share

[Jul. 4th, 2006|03:44 am]
Lets see, we're starting the third week of classes already, as hard as that is to believe. Things are going good on the academic arena with lots of quizzes, practice exercises, but also reading some interesting literature by Chinese authors and papers by Chinese sociologists. Its not exactly the same as reading in English, but it definitely feels more like reading than deciphering now. And some of the roommates have been teaching me some local dialect which surprises people a bit when I first use it.

Last night after I got out of class I went to meet some friends at a concert. It was in a huge old building here built by the Russians in the Russian style - symmetrical, huge, fairly lavish interior, I'll try and post a picture or two of it. I wandered up to the third floor, following the sound of the music, and entered an auditorium about 2/3rds full, with 200 people sitting and clapping to the music. The music was being played by 5 students and it was definitely Rock'n'roll, but not exactly the fast, energetic, angry or exuberant rock we're used to in the states. Instead, like I said, people sat. This reminded me a bit of my dad's description of the Byrds playing in Chapin hall in 1970 where the audience sat. The guitar players and the drummer were very talented with the riffs and keeping a strong beat going (although they seemed to have forgotten to amplify the bass drum which was noticeably lacking). What was really interesting was the lead singer who wanted to kick things up a notch. He would occasionally raise his clenched fist repeatedly trying to get the audience to follow, but all he could elicit was a little more intensity out of the monotonous clapping of the seated audience. The whole time there were several people sending text messages on their phones, pulling out expensive cameras to take pictures, and also, when the singer announced the concert was over and started into the last song people started to exit in masse. I don't think it was because they didn't like it, it was just what you did, let the music walk you out.

On a totally different note, I wanted to talk a little bit about the media here. I have my list of blogs that I like to read to keep up on China news like EastSouthWestNorth , Danwei.com , China Digital Times , The Useless Tree (written by my Chinese Politics professor this last semester), and Chris Bothur's Blog written by a friend of mine from last summer. In addition to the New York Times and Xinhua.com, these form the sites I usually visit when I'm bored and want to read news. What is interesting is that with the exception of China Digital Times and my old blogspot site, all of these are accessible in China. China Digital Times is run by Falun Gong members and is specifically pointed against the communist party, so I understand why they block it. The others (lots not listed) tend to provide fairly even reporting on Chinese events, even if they do occasionally have biting commentary about specific issues (especially EastSouthWestNorth). There are a number of factors why these blogs are allowed, but I think the biggest thing I like to keep in mind is that censorship here is highly intelligent and often incomprehensible to foreigners, indeed many Chinese as well. But the relationship between media and the communist party and China in general is hardly the relatively unidimensional one of push and pull that it was even five years ago, instead being much more educated and expansive over many different issues.

For an excellent discussion of this, see EastSouthWestNorth's entry on this here. Of course being less biased against China means the reports released into the news will cover more issues and not just the bad, but it also means that there are easily as many if not more terrible things happening in China which are not reported in the interest of focusing on other aspects and not seeming biased. In some ways this is a lot like the last presidential debates where reporters would give equal weight to statements by Republicans and Democrats without actually checking if the facts mentioned were correct. The big question is whether the blogosphere will ever be organized enough to produce a comprehensive but 'balance' picture, instead of allowing netizens to surf endlessly on articles that tell them what they want to hear. Nobody knows, and I can't really claim this blog is contributing to any such noble goal.

A quick, only in China moment

Today while out running, listening to music and about as zoned out as you can be on a busy Chinese street - not very - a raucous noise violently overthrew the mp3 in my earphones. I came up on a stage set up on the sidewalk with big balloons, a big, blowup arch and huge speakers with a guy singing his heart out to some pop song. The base was blaring but sounded wildly syncopated, until I realized that next door, 10 meters further down the streat was another state with balloons, arch, singer and speakers playing a different song. Shaking my head in disbelief I caught sight of a third setup like this across the street from these two, doing basically the same thing.

What was going on was the grand opening, or beginning of a sale, at three large home electronics stores. Yes, they were selling fridges, air-conditioning and television sets. No, they were not coordinated, they just decided that this sunday was a good a day as any to attract a crowd, and what better way to do that than balloons and booming pop music.

Just wanted to share that colorful moment because so many just turn right into \'only in china\' memories without getting told.

Interview with an old Party Cadre

This friday for my one-on-one class I went with my teacher to interview an old Party Cadre that she knows. We walked over to his apartment which is in part of the railroad bureau\'s compound (its very common for people to live in company housing, especially if the company is older than 20 years) near the center of the city.

As we walked up the typically dirty staircase of their apartment building I didn\'t know what to expect; because every apartment staircase I\'ve been in is filthy you never know if the apartment is going to be clean but poor or surprisingly lavish. Theirs was very nice but not in an extravagant way, the furnishings were all of high quality but it still seemed a bit spartan in a pleasing way. My first impression upon seeing the Cadre was that he was a rather frail old man, skinny as a stick and wearing rather large glasses. I soon realized that he was a very intelligent man who had an amazing life story to tell.

He was born in 1930 in the second largest city in the province which means he spent most of his childhood and adolescence under Japanese rule. His family were poor peasants (or at least that\'s what he told me they were classified as during the cultural revolution, lucky for them), and he attended highschool during the communist push into the north east, racing the nationalist party to capture the industrial heartland as the Japanese retreated. When he graduated in 1948 he joined the communist party. This has turned out to be a very profitable decision, as any party members who joined before 1949 now recive twice the amount in old age pension.

He told me about his unshakable faith in Mao during the Great Leap Forward, giving half of his already insuficcient meal ticket to factory workers. Buying an American radio in 1955 for 3 months wages, the first one among his friends to have this new invention. He told me about getting denounced by big character posters at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, since he was the fifth ranked person in his 单位 (work unit) of over 1000 people, and how he was incredibly confused because he still really trusted Mao. But he said he found some solution in his heart, basically that Mao was right and the problems were in the middle levels of the party. He was reinstated after martial law was imposed, shaken by Deng Xiao Ping\'s denounciation, and especially when he was denounced the second time. He told me about his reaction to the first newspaper article published criticizing Mao, albeit guardedly (Mao was 70% right and 30% wrong, officially), how he wasn\'t happy but at the same time felt it was important to have more openness.

We talked about his work with the railroad reforms as China modernized, the advising he still does for the railroad and the sorts of 关系 (special relationships) that he still has. We talked about him retiring and his present views on China which were by far the most exciting.

We talked about the present rot in society and in the Party, because during Mao\'s time there really wasn\'t much, a point he reminded me of a few times. I asked him if there might be a relationship between having a disciplined and centrally controlled party, and next to no economic growth. He agreed, but turned the question around and said that then there were no opportunities for corruption and every one believed in the Party and socialism. Now it is not like that, there are many opportunities, the center is weaker and the belief in a higher ideal is gone. Then he told me an anecdote which left a deep impression in me, especially because it came from a truly dedicated and intelligent party member. During the war when Mao was still a peasant revolutionary he had an encounter with the leader of a large minority group. They spoke of the great China that Mao would create if he won, and the man told him that every great empire in China had fallen because of decay, so how would Mao prevent that? And Mao replied that the people will always keep decay under control. He said it with a sort of glint in his eyes of someone who\'s been there and doesn\'t bother with excuses and I was really surprised that he had chosen to bring up that pointed of an anecdote. A while later, he mentioned that he really approved of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiaobu before him - agree with the leaders but fault the middle layers.

The last instance I want to relate was still talking about rot. He brought up the coal mine accident that happened in May of this year where 56 miners were trapped underground. He was really angered by this, blasting the managers for being inept and only looking at profit. He told me that he knew one of the top managers personally, although somewhat distantly, and that he had written him a letter, a very impolite letter. He had said, \'did you even go into the mine yourself? you had sure as hell listen to Hu Jintao and fix this situation, you had better see that the money the central government is giving you goes towards safety and doesn\'t end up in somebody\'s pocket\'. He signed it with his full name and former position to give as much weight as he could. He said he doesn\'t expect a response.

It was a really great interview, about 2 1/2 hours of him telling stories and me interrupting occasionally, to say I understood less than the gist of what he was saying. I wouldn\'t say that anything he said contradicted what I\'ve read in articles and class about changing politics here, rather confirmed it in an incredibly colorful and real way. Its easy to talk about the flaws of a planned economy. Its much more interesting to talk to someone who truly believes in socialism and Mao Zedong thought, and yet is by no means afraid to ask himself the hard questions of how to make it work and why things didn\'t work out like they were supposed to.

长白山 - Changbai shan and North Korea

This weekend marks the halfway point in the summer semester here at CET. To celebrate, we all took a 2 day/3 night trip to the east and south of Harbin to climb a mountain called 长白山 (Changbaishan) on the North Korean border. We spent the night in a hostel (sort of, see below) and then cruised around 延吉 （yanji) which is a border city with North Korea. Most of our roommates were able to come with us and it was an amazing weekend of traveling, China with Korean characteristics and good Chinese practice.

At about 7:00 on Thursday we took the bus to the train station. All I had was a backpack and a sword. Yes, a sword, which I boldly carried in my hand into the station, passed it through the metal detector without batting an eye, and walked onto the train. We boarded the hard sleeper overnight train for Changbaishan, the 30 people in our program taking over most of one of the cars and hanging out in the passageway to the annoyance of the train personel. We were all very excited to be leaving the city for a new place, and our roommates had just finished their final exams so they were obviously happy. At this point you might be saying, \'Morgan, WTF, a sword? Is this Kill Bill!\' Never fear, all good things come in time. I spent a while talking with two roommates, Renfeng and (how embarrassing that I forget her name), planning the plot of the kungfu movie that we were going to shoot as we climbed changbaishan, making a plot of love, kungfu skill, mystery and of course all of it way more complicated and illogical than it should be. Needless to say, I was very excited about mountains, movies, traveling and the like and I ended up getting about 2 hours of sleep. I even tried to use a friends cell phone and IP card to call home, on the mistaken assumption that Friday was the 15th, my birthday. No I wasn\'t drinking anything, just excited.

At 5:30 am we got off the train and met our new tourguides (2 from Harbin plus one local one). All I wanted to do was sleep but the guy from Harbin just wanted to talk to me. He was 23, just graduated from tourguide school and really liked reading history books and watching history movies. He told me a long story about the ancient ethnicities of north eastern china, how different peoples had become different races, which all let up to a story of a war and fued between two families over 300 years ago which was crucially important to the Manchurians taking over the rest of the middle kingdom and as a result these two families, even 300 years later can\'t inter-marry. (A good point about Chinese politics and \'fued\'s being played out on a longer time scale than we\'re used to, read: they might wait 100 years to get Taiwan back but there\'s not a chance they\'re going to forget). Of course he told me a lot more but I was way too tired to have him clarify the vocab that I didn\'t understand. I told him a very bad version of the Indian wars in upstate NY during the French and Indian war after he asked for a similar story from my country.

After breakfast we got back on the bus to drive to Changbaishan. As we approached we were harangued for half an hour by our tourguiedes shrill voice talking about the tree species, cultural significance of changbaishan and that it was perfectly safe because the last erruption was 304 years ago. She then explained that it had erupted several more times in recorded history (which is fairly long here), I forget the other years, but that the local oral history said the mountain would erupt every 300 years. Although I was ready to flee at any moment, no signs of volcanic activity were seen, don\'t worry. I also learned how to say fun words like volcanic eruption and soapstones, yay Chinese. The bus stopped at the gate, which had huge billboard pictures of themountain, but there was no mountain insight above the tree tops in this flat forest. We walked through the gate and boarded another bus which took us for another 20 minutes on an increasingly steep road that finally arrived at a much bigger mountain than I expected.

Changbaishan is a cauldera very similar to Crater Lake, OR. The ring of mountains are over 2000m (6000 plus feet) with a very large lake, several K accross and over 400m deep at the top. The North Korean border passes very close to the lake, on the opposite side, so I can say I\'ve seen North Korea. The approach climbs up a wide valley caused by the most recent eruption and requires a covered staircase to protect against the loose rocks falling from the high cliffs. The steepest part has a several hundred foot tall water fall which fans out into rolling aspen forests, grey to yellow tinted cliffs giving it a very distinctive feel. There were also some hot springs at the beginning of the trail and the big attraction was eating eggs that had been naturally hard boiled in the springs. They tasted like hardboiled eggs.

As with all mountains in China, the equipment and skills perceived necessary by the climbers varies widely. We wore our sneakers and had packs with water, snacks and sweatshirts. Many people didn\'t carry anything and wore their leather dress shoes and slacks. I didn\'t see any skirts so at least most Chinese here were informed that this was a real mountain. Then there were a couple very large groups of Korean tourists who were all decked out in perfectly new, name brand mountain climbing gear and accessories. (hats, glasses, ski poles, packs, special shirts, pants, collapsable chairs, etc) I watched them closely but they didn\'t attempt any of the scree slopes or peaks, staying on the same stone staircase that everyone else used. Maybe most interesting were several of the Chinese girls on our trip who were genuinely worried that there wouldn\'t be enough male students around to help them climb the mountain. This perplexed me a lot because they really insisted on male students help and wouldn\'t accept the help of the capable American females. At first this seemed like a flirting game that students here play a lot, with the girls trying to be extra girly to get their guy friends to be extra macho (or more sensitive and feminine as the case may be). But this went passed friendly flirting and seemed to speak something about the interesting way gender roles are developing, not exactly upholding the capable and independent image of women we\'re used to in the West. Issues like them all being single children, experimenting with identity and relationships and having even less of a base of cultural precedent that American college students (us) feel at this point in their lives are all intertwined here and I think this is a fascinating aspect of modern culture here. Ok, Enough of that.

The whole time I\'m climbing the mountain I\'m carrying a sword! You have no idea how great it feels to climb a mountain with a sword at your side! The Chinese comments were hilarious, from \'hello master\' to \'is that to protect against tigers?\' to \'excellent sword, foreigner, good quality\' (note: this is the cheapest taiji sword you can buy, and it was old and borrowed from a friend anyway), at the top one Korean hawker was really excited and really, really wanted to buy it. As much fun as it would be to reverse roles in the bargaining game, I refused on the basis of our kungfu movie not being finished yet.

The movie I\'m not going to talk too much about because I\'d rather have you watch it (when its finished), but we essentially chose the most beautiful backgrounds possible to carry out our incredibly cheesy kungfu/love story, getting some very interesting looks and having lots of fun.

After mountain climbing we went to a place called the underground forest which is really a sunken volcano crater which has a big forest in it, essentially below the surrounding terrain, home to diverse wildlife and plants. Then we went back up towards the mountain to go to a public shower/hot springs. It was a classy spa, with seperate halves for males and females. Since all our teachers and the older tourguides were female, us guys were left to ourselves, which meant running around like a bunch of naked 10 year olds, splashing, whipping towels, making dumb jokes about inviting the girls over and having a righteous time. Self conscious is not a word I would use to describe our Chinese roommates when there weren\'t any girls around.

That night we stayed in a 兵官， which literally means \'soldier lodge\' but is generally used for more economy hotels or this place which could be called a bed and breakfast. No, not bed, 炕 (kang). 炕 are used all over northern China to sleep on in the winter. It\'s essentially like sleeping on top of a fireplace. Its built like a large bread oven and you sleep on top, usually rolling your blanket out on top of the bricks, squeezing people in rather tight since it forms the entire floor of \'bedroom\' that you step up two feet to get into. Being summer, there was no fire under ours, and it was like sleeping on a thick blanket on a brick floor, so hard but not bad. Before bed four of us (one cool kid from Harbin and three of us Americans) sat out on some sofa\'s on their porch, watching the stars and telling gost stories and other tales from our lives. It was a very nice night.

The second day we got back on the bus for a four hour ride to the city of 延吉 (yanji)。I some of the Chinese girls taught me a card game, and after of about 10 minutes of struggling with rules and vocab realized it was Hearts with chinese characteristics – just different scoring, and things got much easier. The middle of the drive was highlighted by driving through a very small village which our tourguide explained was predominantly of Korean ethnicity which you could see by how they built their houses and the layout of the town. The bus didn\'t stop, only slowed down so we could gawk out the windows at these people who had suddenly and unwittingly become a museam attraction to be stared ot through the glass. I havn\'t been to see other \'chinese ethnic minorities\' in China, but from what I hear this is the fairly standard mentality: present a people and their \'ethnic characteristics\', take a busload of tourists to see these people and their characteristics and maybe buy some souvineers or buy a few sticks of incense, and of course take lots of pictures. I can\'t say I felt too comfortable looking out at the people going about their lives, looking slightly confused to see a couple tourbusses driving slowly through.

The city of 延吉 was nice, not too big and just about like most other cities I\'ve been to. There were lots of Koreans selling things, some of it having \'North Korean characteristics\' but like tourist items all over the world, most of it was made in China. We wandered through some shops and looked at things, but there really wasn\'t much here that seemed that interesting when compared to climbing volcanoes. But still, it was my birthday and my friends here weren\'t about to let me forget it. At dinner, Korean, do-it-your-self BBQ, they rolled out a big cake, complete with a pink, plastic flower/candle that played happy birthday continuously. And like all cakes here, the cake itself was a plain as plain can be, yellow and bland, only made interesting by the visually highly complicated but entirely flavorless frosting. But I\'m not complaining, merely explaining. It was a great birthday, thanks to all of you here for attending (ha, it was part of our planned trip, you didn\'t have a choice)

But I\'d also like to say a big hello and thank you to friends and family, literally from all over the world who sent birthday wishes, or who felt facebook.com was too silly and who were still thinking of me. And for those who weren\'t, I\'m more than happy you were doing something exciting enough that home and friends didn\'t cross your mind. I\'m not sure any of use knows what it means to live in a world where we can be in constant contact with friends in China, New Zealand, Nicaragua, France, Pakistan, the entire span of the US, heading off for Russia, Tibet, Uzbekistan, Africa, Lebanon, etc. But even if we don\'t know, we\'re sure as hell going to try and find out.

Here are pictures: Pending Facebook.com working again...
The movie (CET Kungfu lovestory, Part II) will be a little bit longer in coming, but trust me, it\'ll be worth it. Signing out for now,
古木军
Morgan

Geman/South American BBQ

After reading the title of this post, you might be wondering what German cuisine and South American cooking have in common. I\'m here to tell you that in Harbin, China, they have found the answer. It is called Hans and it is an incredibly popular restaurant near the center of the city.

Hans is a big multi-story restaurant, just like all the good ones here. In America the better a restaurant is the more likely it is to be small and exclusive, but in China the better a restaurant is the more floors it has. Even with 4 big floors we had to wait to get a table at 6:00 on Tuesday night. We ordered our beers, which is the first time I\'ve found dark beer in China, and they definitely tasted at least a bit German. The waiter was also dressed in something that was supposed to resemble laiderhosen and the posters on the walls all depicted German beer or holidays. But the waiter also wore a cowboy hat, which took me a few glances to realize how out of place it was with the german theme.

It was then explained to me that this is actually South American food. At least in Harbin, South American food means a huge BBQ with long, double pronged skewers that look like a Dr. Suess drawing. The skewers are then brought around by the waiters who place one end of the skewer on your plate (they\'re about 24 inches long) and then use a very long and sharp knife, inches from your face, to cut off pieces of whatever meat it happens to be. Since they don\'t give you very much every time, opting instead for variety, this happened at least a dozen times over the hour that we ate. Needless to say I felt bloated from all the meat although it was all very tasty. So if this makes you interested in German/South American food, come to Harbin because its the only place in the world you\'re going to find it.

World cup and Video

As I\'m up late watching the Italy gloriously win the world cup, I was a little productive and posted our kungfu movie on the web.

As promised, you can now see for yourself how hard I\'ve been working at Chinese language and culture. Watch the video on youtube.com And remember, don\'t try these stunts at home.

帽儿山 Hat Mountain

Hello all,

Yesterday the planned activity for CET was a dinner out, and I didn\'t think that was exciting enough, so a friend and I got about 9 of us together and rented a bus to drive us out of the city to go mountain climbing. I\'ll back up to mention that our teacher helped us rent the bus, but Li Laoshi (the teacher) didn\'t come, so we were mostly on our own.

We drove about 2 hours out of the city to a place called Maoershan, or Hat Mountain. Most of the drive was on the highway. China\'s in the middle of building a highway system similar to the US, and in less than 10 years the system is expected to have more miles of dived highway than the US (yikes), this road was certainly one of the earlier ones built and looked about the same as a US road. Combined with the fact that we were driving through a hilly, wooded terrain with tilled fields in the narrow-ish valleys. It felt like Vermont, which is a nice feeling after not even getting to the outskirts a Chinese city for 3 weeks.

We then had to navigate the dirt roads of the 农村 （farming village) at the base of the mountain, asking directions frequently until we arrived at a dirt parking lot next to the cleanest river I\'ve seen in China - about like the Green river or the Ausable river looks, for reference. We walked over the bridge, but you could also drive on a concrete ford that the river flowed over. This was designed to drive your car onto and then you got out into the 4 inches of flowing water and washed your car in the stream. (Luckily I didn\'t see anyone using soap).

Hat Mountain does not have a ticket price, and considering it has a cobble stone path the entire way I\'m not sure why they don\'t charge. But the hundreds of well dressed (skirts, dress shoes, etc) and well off Harbin\'ers wandered up the muddy and at times very steep cobblestone path. There were only a few people selling water or snacks along the way, and no built stalls. There were three guys at the top selling bottle water and poloraid photos, and we chatted with them for a while about this and that. Taiwan came up somehow and I agreed with him that America had been interfering in that aspect of Chinese affairs for 57 years. (note, I don\'t know what I really think about this issue so I say that here to be polite). He beamed a huge smile and then told me that if I ran for president of the US he would vote for me. He also told me about the town building the cobblestone trail a year ago (presumably to attract more tourists which it certainly has), and how the mountain is being developed, with Chinese characteristics of course.

The mountain itself, geologically speaking (warning: my less than expert opinion), is interesting. It has a very distinctive shape, getting steeper and steeper all the way up to the top which is flat but only about 60-80 meters across. The last 100-200 vertical feet are cliffs or near cliffs. The path used lots of chains bolted to the rocks and steps cut in the rock, and they were definitely necessary. Now if I had to guess, I\'d say this might be the core of a fairly old volcano, the lava tubes in the center being of a somewhat harder substance than the older mountain left to stand in this fairly vertical way. Devils tower is the best example of this if you want to picture it. That\'s the limit of my expertise, next topic.

On the way down, we were taking our time and one of the Korean students came up with the idea of making a CET kungfu movie, so we did. He and I \'fought\' in a few different spots, including on a cabble suspension bridge. Then instead of going out last night we stayed in and edited it. If I can figure out how to put it on Youtube.com I will, after I make English subtitles for it of course, and post the link. But for now, we\'re planning the sequel, to be filmed next weekend when we take our long trip to Changbaishan.

That\'s all for this condensed version of our Saturday. You can see the facebook.com for photos of course, and drop me a comment here or there to harass me and tell me what you want to hear more about.

Hope you\'re all well,
-古木军-
-morgan-

Some Smaller Tidbits I\'d Like To Share

Lets see, we\'re starting the third week of classes already, as hard as that is to believe. Things are going good on the academic arena with lots of quizzes, practice exercises, but also reading some interesting literature by Chinese authors and papers by Chinese sociologists. Its not exactly the same as reading in English, but it definitely feels more like reading than deciphering now. And some of the roommates have been teaching me some local dialect which surprises people a bit when I first use it.

Last night after I got out of class I went to meet some friends at a concert. It was in a huge old building here built by the Russians in the Russian style - symmetrical, huge, fairly lavish interior, I\'ll try and post a picture or two of it. I wandered up to the third floor, following the sound of the music, and entered an auditorium about 2/3rds full, with 200 people sitting and clapping to the music. The music was being played by 5 students and it was definitely Rock\'n\'roll, but not exactly the fast, energetic, angry or exuberant rock we\'re used to in the states. Instead, like I said, people sat. This reminded me a bit of my dad\'s description of the Byrds playing in Chapin hall in 1970 where the audience sat. The guitar players and the drummer were very talented with the riffs and keeping a strong beat going (although they seemed to have forgotten to amplify the bass drum which was noticeably lacking). What was really interesting was the lead singer who wanted to kick things up a notch. He would occasionally raise his clenched fist repeatedly trying to get the audience to follow, but all he could elicit was a little more intensity out of the monotonous clapping of the seated audience. The whole time there were several people sending text messages on their phones, pulling out expensive cameras to take pictures, and also, when the singer announced the concert was over and started into the last song people started to exit in masse. I don\'t think it was because they didn\'t like it, it was just what you did, let the music walk you out.

On a totally different note, I wanted to talk a little bit about the media here. I have my list of blogs that I like to read to keep up on China news like EastSouthWestNorth , Danwei.com , China Digital Times , The Useless Tree (written by my Chinese Politics professor this last semester), and Chris Bothur\'s Blog written by a friend of mine from last summer. In addition to the New York Times and Xinhua.com, these form the sites I usually visit when I\'m bored and want to read news. What is interesting is that with the exception of China Digital Times and my old blogspot site, all of these are accessible in China. China Digital Times is run by Falun Gong members and is specifically pointed against the communist party, so I understand why they block it. The others (lots not listed) tend to provide fairly even reporting on Chinese events, even if they do occasionally have biting commentary about specific issues (especially EastSouthWestNorth). There are a number of factors why these blogs are allowed, but I think the biggest thing I like to keep in mind is that censorship here is highly intelligent and often incomprehensible to foreigners, indeed many Chinese as well. But the relationship between media and the communist party and China in general is hardly the relatively unidimensional one of push and pull that it was even five years ago, instead being much more educated and expansive over many different issues.

For an excellent discussion of this, see EastSouthWestNorth\'s entry on this here. Of course being less biased against China means the reports released into the news will cover more issues and not just the bad, but it also means that there are easily as many if not more terrible things happening in China which are not reported in the interest of focusing on other aspects and not seeming biased. In some ways this is a lot like the last presidential debates where reporters would give equal weight to statements by Republicans and Democrats without actually checking if the facts mentioned were correct. The big question is whether the blogosphere will ever be organized enough to produce a comprehensive but \'balance\' picture, instead of allowing netizens to surf endlessly on articles that tell them what they want to hear. Nobody knows, and I can\'t really claim this blog is contributing to any such noble goal.

松鼠岛 Squirrel Island

Saturday our weekend excursion consisted of a picnic lunch at a place called 太阳岛, or sun island park. It is a huge park on the other side of the river from the city, probably as big as Central Park in NYC, and its very famous in China. Like all parks in China, its what we would describe as extremely fake or contrived. It is perfectly taken care of with straight or curving rows of flowers, intricately carved hedges and sculptures, pump-run waterfalls, a manmade mountain and lake, etc. I guess I\'ve gotten used to the Chinese idea of going to a \'park\' to enjoy \'nature\' because I really liked the place. We picnicked, tossed a frisbee, kicked a soccer ball around. Unlike many other small parks, you can actually walk on the grass on this one, but of course grass is considered pretty dirty so most Chinese people don\'t.

This was all pretty within my expectations until we started seeing signs for something called squirrel island, or 松鼠岛. At first I thought it would just be a island with big carved squirrels sitting in a contrived forest or it was just a name. But as we got closer I saw the entire place was ringed in a 3 foot high plexiglass wall, and I began to think, that must be to keep the squirrels from escaping.

For those of you who haven\'t been to China, there is a noticeable lack of small critters everywhere. In the cities there are no pigeons, no squirrels and not really any other birds. I think the reasons for this are partly pollution related, partly because people will usually try and catch them for pets, and partly because Mao Zedong promoted a campaign to rid cities of dirty little animals. I\'m not sure how large these effects are, but the result is that seeing squirrels is a novelty.

First, you walk through a ten foot tall and ten foot wide \'stump\' which is really a clever disguise for a large, plexiglas spinning door which is virtually squirrel proof. Then there is a small moat around the island. As we got to the island we saw a group of about 20 people all crouched around, camera\'s poised as two little girls used 20 cent packets of squirrel food to feed some scrawny looking squirrels by hand.

This island was literally packed with squirrels and people loved it. They were snapping pictures left and right, buying more food and gathering in small groups to talk excitedly about the squirrels. I don\'t know how the squirrels were so scrawny (litterally 1/3rd the size of squirrels at Williams) but they were surely incredibly overpopulated and didn\'t have any predators. The signs were also amazing, with english translations consisting of \'no chasing or hitting of squirrels, for your safety\' and \'balmy grass is so green, careful step is so sweet\'

As we were leaving we also walked by a \'deer garden\', which was virtually the same thing. Yes, there were deer walking around and you could buy food to give them and they were being petted, caressed, chased after and photographed by a small horde of people, including us.

For pictures of the excursion, you can see my facebook.com album. I\'m off to study because I haven\'t done any all weekend.

Facebook With Chinese Characteristics

Facebook.com, for those of you who don\'t know, get someone in college to explain for you. Facebook has not expanded into other countries, leaving a very successful business model and idea to be picked up by other people here. The result is xiaonei.cn for those of you who want to look, and it is definitely facebook with Chinese characteristics.

The first thing you notice is that the colors are exactly the same as facebook, the menus in the same places and mean almost exactly the same thing. They have your personal page with your interests (爱好), music, contact info, etc. There is the wall, your list of friends and their pictures, your groups, events, etc. Its in the differences that xiaonei.cn becomes really interesting. The biggest difference, painfully evident upon visiting most people\'s pages, is that you can change the background of your page, adding a background picture and even music. Its quite amazing. You also have a \'blog\' that appears above your wall posts which some people use a little like a xanga, but others don\'t update. The other huge thing is that you can see how many people have looked at your page and who they are. For most people this is probably not that relevant, but then there are those people that aspire to the list of the most visited profiles. I saw a girl at beijing university (luckily the list isn\'t strictly ranked by numbers so you can\'t know for who has the most) who had 50,000 hits.

I started a xiaonei.cn profile, of course. All you need is a Chinese email address, which I got for free, not a college one. It\'s really fun to figure out the language on the site and type ridiculously simple wall posts.

In different news, last night was a Kareoke night, which is a perfect activity for kids who want to have fun but half don\'t want to drink (female roommates). We stayed out till 4, and because we\'re so far east that means the sun was rising, aiyah. But that did let me watch the first half of the Italy/Ukraine game. Today we\'re off to a big tourist park for a picnic lunch, tonight perhaps a massage, and then back to the books.

Talking about the priveledges of a small, liberal arts College

Many of the roommates here are very interested in what college life is like in America, understandably. They like to ask questions about how big our classes are, our schools are, what the dorms are actually like as far as singles, doubles, genders, hours, etc, what the food is like, relationships with professors, etc. Basically everything one might get asked when hosting a prospective student. Now, I am only speaking from what I know from friends, because I have obviously not attended a large state school, but I\'m going to venture to say that HIT (Harbin Institute of Technology) is much more similar to a large state school than it is to a small liberal arts college. I think this double tier of differences makes describing school in America difficult.

A few obvious similarities: There are 50,000 students at HIT. Dorms are all single sex, and I think some significant proportion at some state schools are. Tuition here is very inexpensive ($500-$1000 per year), much cheaper but comparable to instate at most state universities. Social life here is organized around your 社团(she tuan) which are groups close to co-ed fraternities of around 100 people that most people choose to join. They organize social events, speakers, live together (but split by gender), and generally form tight groups which correspond somewhat to the fraternity culture of big universities which seems to be as alive as ever. And also your major is very important for who you know and see regularly here. Here you choose your major before you arrive at school, which I think is true for most technical programs at American Universities.

A funny story about choosing majors in china. You actually choose them (I\'m pretty sure) when you get the results from the national college entrance exam. They give you a list of the universities that you can attend based on your grade (pretty efficient, huh?). I was talking with a student here who chose a major that turned out to be something very different from what he thought he chose, which apparently isn\'t an uncommon ocurance. He picked 电子科技与技术 from the list, which literally translates to \'electrical science and technology\' but actually is the word for \'laser\' which he didn\'t know at the time. Now his entire academic life at school is devoted to studying lasers, plus the required courses on Chinese political philosophy.

Anyway, I got into a bit of a discussion with him about how they were probably getting a very distorted image of American education, since such a small percentage of Americans attend small, liberal arts colleges, and yet I think 13 out of the 16 of us CET students here do, or did. Sometimes I feel a little guilty because I think the American system of education, with experience based learning and an emphasis on individual, original thought is superior in most ways. This is somewhat reinforced by the fact that large foreign firms operating in China prefer most of their employees who do creative or high level work to be western educated. But at the same time it does feel good to describe the richness of the different kinds of education philosophy (or political systems or rural lifestyles) possible in our pluralistic society.

Old Harbin

First of all, in an almost comical conclusion to my lengthy explanation of buying a cellphone and all my great plans for using it, I lost it. It was very stupid; we were riding in cab and it fell out of my pocket. I noticed about a minute after we got out, ran back, but the taxi had taken off. Not exactly what I had in mind for the phone, but really, what can you do? I\'m not sure if I\'m going to get another, maybe a second hand one this time, but I think I\'ll wait to see if it\'s a pain not having one. So it goes.

The Chinese students here have been very busy these last few days as they cram for the big exam which starts right now, 10:00 am Sunday morning. Every first year has a big exam on Mao Zedong theory, second years have Deng Xiaoping and third years have a big test on Marx, which along with a month of mandatory military training, forms the core of the state\'s presence in higher education. I read the first page of their book on Deng, which was full of the words I\'ve been learning like \'system\', \'reform\', \'economic pace\' and \'possessing Chinese characteristics\', and found it rather readable. The introduction basically said \'China has made two attempts to establish a Socialist country. Mao tried once and it didn\'t quite work out. Deng\'s theory, with the help of Mao\'s theory, is succeeding in working towards a socialist system.\' I might try and read more of the book, because you have to admit, its interesting to see what the official line is on balancing Mao, Deng, opening and reform with an inflexible political (although not government) system over the 57 years of Communist power.

Anyway, yesterday we all piled into a bus and headed off to the old quarter of Harbin. It is a few streets by the river that were part of the original city here, mostly built by the Russian. The city of Harbin is actually only about 100 years old and dates back to when the Russians were asked to assist in building a rail link from China to Vladivostock port. In that respect it is a little like Shanghai, started by foreigners as a purely economic center but now fully integrated back into China. While this area of China was the industrial heartland for most of the first half of the 20th century thanks to Russian and Japanese development here (whether invited or not), it has since been eclipsed by the booming coastal cities in the south and now has fallen back a little to be the trading hub of the very rich agricultural lands of the northeast.

Our roommates took a few hours off from studying Deng theory to come along and we all got out to wander around the streets. It looked like a bustling part of the city, the buildings were mostly run down Russian styled ones, and there were a lot of Weiger (from xinjiang province/muslim chinese) people working in the outdoor markets. We walked right down to the Songhua River to skip some stones and take pictures. The river\'s a few hundred meters wide here, flowing slowly to the north, and it looks quite pretty until you get right up to it and then you see a little bit of oily streaks here, the usual old plastic bag there, and then you realize its like just about every other river in China – something to be used and considered pretty but not worth spending the money to clean up. But maybe its not worth putting money into river clean up when it\'s necessary to pay much needed teacher\'s salaries, or subsidize food so even the poorest have no problem eating, or even more necessary, building another large electronics store. And of course oily streaks don\'t stop the young men from wading out into with their fishing nets to catch a few entrees for a near by restaraunt. My final judgement: the river \'possesses Chinese characteristics\'，具有中国特色。

The riverside is several miles of parks with wide walking paths and trees which actually are quite nice if you don\'t see the bits of garbage everywhere. We wandered into one park complete with a playground, children\'s slides and a WWII tank, WWII plane and a more recent fighter jet sitting on cement blocks for the kids to climb on. (You\'re just going to have to live with that description, I can\'t explain why they were there.) We met for dinner, enjoying the amazing variety of foods here. I think there is more variety in Northeaster food here than there is all of the \'American\' restaraunts put together. I did stay well awy from the fish though.

Buying a Shouji

Todays\' Chinese word of the day is: shouji. It literally means \'hand\' and \'machine\' and put together that translates to \'cellphone\'. Cellphones are a way of life here, probably used more than Americans use theirs. In addition to staying in constant touch for locating one another or gossiping, young Chinese are constantly using their txt messaging to write short little notes. My roommate uses his a lot to keep in touch with his girlfriend, maybe writing her as many as a dozen txt messages a day, and once I even saw him in the morning, sleeping with his phone in hand. I couldn\'t tell if he had fallen asleep while using it or if he was just keeping it close at hand in case he recieved a txt while he slept. Many Chinese even have two cellphones. A cellphone that can call all of China, or even America if you\'re willing to pay the rate, is probably a little more common, but lots of people also have a local phone. It\'s a seperate phone that has a seperate calling plan and is extremely cheap to make or recive calls from the same city but can\'t be used to make or recive any from outside.

With all the hype, I decided to buy a shouji to see if txt-ing was really as addicting as it seems. My roommate, Yaorui and I went to the nearest large department store, walkinig past the long rows of airconditioners, hot plates, TVs and cameras till we got to the long, shiny display cases full of cell phones. Because here you buy the phone seperate from the plan, there\'s a huge market to cell every brand and every model of phone. There were literally hundreds of choices, and the fuwuyuan (service person) immediately wanted to show me the best phone there, costing about $400, it was very slim, had a mp3 player, zoom camera, huge color screen, everything you could ever want in a phone, and of course it was very shuai (handsome/cool). I of course told him I was only here for two months and wanted something on the cheaper end.

After about half an hour of intense discussion between me, Yaorui and the very anxious fuwuyuan, examining about a dozen different models, I finally decided on....you guessed it, the cheapest one. Motorolo C118, for those interested. It cost 400 RMB, or about $50, has a black and white screen and is the most basic cell phone I\'ve ever seen, which is perfect. Next came the hard part, buying a cell phone plan. It is possible to buy plans (SIM card, phone number, and minutes) at most street stalls, but the school has an office that sells them too. As we walked up to the counter the girl behind it gave us a lazy look. Lazy doesn\'t really describe it, it was more of a how-dare-you-disturb-my-lazy-afternoon kind of look. As an employee of basically the government (government - state run university - university run cell phone service desk), she was in sharp contrast to the fuwuyuan of the department store.

I picked out a phone number, (13703607956) based on how many 3s, 6s and 9s it had in it (lucky numbers here), and then came the hard part. As someone who\'s obviously not Chinese, she was surprised that I had a student ID from this university. We had to photo copy that for her, and then she needed an govt. issued ID. Obviously this would have been my passport, but for somereason she and her boss needed a citizen ID. I had to explain to them that we don\'t have that in America, which left no impression on them as evidenced by their blank stares. We ended up getting the phone plan under Yaorui\'s name, using his student ID and citizen ID. I feel this was a ton of identification just for a cell phone plan that is entirely prepaid, but who am I to say.

So now I have a shouji, which i\'ve been using a lot to txt in Chinese, mostly with Yaorui, about mostly logistics. But I think the process is another little step to go through to become that much more at home here and that much more fluent in the cultural as well as obviously the language pecularities of university students in China.

Diving in Headfirst
Today was the first day of class. Yesterday we took our language pledge (\'i pledge not to speak any language other than mandarin...\'), met our teachers, got our first homework and met our roommates.

My roommate\'s name is Yao2 Rui4. He is from the province south of here, near Dalian, and he studies something having to do with electrical engineering, I haven\'t figured it out exactly yet. But he\'s really nice and this evening I got to meet a few of his friends, we all hung out in our room and chatted for a while about music, movies, etc. My new word of the day (one of many, but if I had to pick one,) is dao4 ban3, which literally means pirated, as in DVDs. It feels so good to just sit around and chat in Chinese, even if more than half of the \'chatting\' is them trying to explain to me what they mean, but still, very linghou (free, smooth).

Today we started class. I have 4 classes, each fairly distinct, unlike last summer\'s fully coordinated and integrated program. First was Business Chinese, learning long lists of shengci (vocab) like \'efficiency\', \'economic system\', \'financial loss\' and \'to establish a unified system with special characteristics\'. My other class is a literature class where we read various short stories written in modern China (for Chinese readers, not foreign students), which looks like it will be my hardest class by a bit. We also have one-on-two class, which is mostly pronounciation, with which I defiinitely have a few distinct problems. Probably the one I\'m most excited about and nervous about is the one-on-one class, or the research class. I met my professor already, and she seems very cool, and her specialty is very close to the research topic I chose. I will be looking at Chinese perceptions of westernization, how they feel the west is encroaching on (or brightening) their lives here in a fairly out-of-the-way city. She studies how technology affects society, so I\'m also very curious to hear more about her work.

Last night we went out to a restaraunt with our new roommates. There were about 12 of us sitting around a big table with a big lazy susan in the middle. This restaraunt\'s specialty is a kind of northeastern dish that consists of either ribs or leg bones of pig stacked in a heaping pile on a plate, with bits of meat hanging off them. They give you a plastic glove with your chopsticks and you just grab a big hunk. It feels very neanderthal, especially to someone who\'s three years of vegetarianism is on a brief two month haitus, but I\'d be lying if I said it didn\'t taste good. Then we started toasting each other as if we were old Chinese businessmen, trying to make the people around us drink more and more by doing a ganbei (literally, dry/empty your cup) with them. I didn\'t drink that much, but when I came home and started doing my homewwork I lasted about 20 minutes and then fell right asleep at 10:00 or so. This morning I had to reassure my roommate that this is not my xiguan (habit), that I really stay up later and he shouldn\'t worry that he\'s stuck with a nerdy, early-to-bed American. But the combination of jumping right into the language pledge, meeting the roommate, running for over an hour then playing an hour of soccer, trying to homework for the first time in a month and not quite being adjusted to the time zone meant I was out like a light for the next ten hours. So it goes.

We arrived in Beijing at about 11:00 pm last night and got into the hotel fairly
exhausted. I intended to hold my promise to see Paul, Grace and David from
last summer, so I rallied the troops, fought off travel fatigue and took a taxi
accross the city. Conversation was awkward, I\'m more rusty than I thought.

We ate jiaozi (dumplings) at a little restaraunt where I celebrated my 21st
birthday last summer and watched Tunisa vs. Soudi Arabia on the bigscreen
outside on the sidewalk. Sanlituan has changed a lot in a year, there\'s now a
huge mall where there wasn\'t anything before.

Today has been a day of walking around the city, doing nothing in particular. I
was happy to be a good tour guide to a few of the kids here, ordering the
yuxiangqiezi (fish-like eggplant) like a pro, and walking around Tiananmen
square. But tonight we\'re off to the train station for the overnight trip to
Harbin, where the adventure really begins.

12 hours in soft sleeper, woohoo!

Arriving in Harbin, or Ha1-er3-bin1, yesterday morning was like stepping into a new world. From the train windows we watched the large, green fields pass by with the occasional factory or highway dotting the landscape. Other parts of China, around Beijing and Xi\'an tend to be much drier and less fertile and I was expecting this part of the northeast to be even drier but instead there is rain! Although it had just rained when the train arrived the sky was already half blue and the air was so fresh. I don\'t want to speak too soon but I think the air pollution and heat aren\'t going to be as bad as Beijing.

Breakfast was yet another surprise. We stopped at a little cafe which could have been in San Francisco. It was yellow stucco, there were nice tables outside on the patio and a trendy looking sign that read \'Hamamas Kofi Haus\'. The food was European, with coffee, bread, cheese, jelly and fruit. I commented to the shifu (proprieter) that I liked it and she told me it was a Papua New Guinean establishment. I smiled and nodded, confused as all hell as to how it was connected to Papua New Guinea, but figured that was her problem.

The day consisted of orientation, a campus tour, the entrance exam, arranged dinner, shopping for toiletries, etc. In the fangbian shitang (convenient cafeteria) I ate what must have been the cheapest lunch ever, 8 jiao (10 jiao to 1 yuan, which is 12 cents) for a plate of dumplings. Apparently in the inconvenient but main and better tasting shitang the food is cheaper.

Then a couple of us went out to a little bar to watch Argentina beat the crap out of Serbia and Montenegro. The bar was a foreigner\'s hang out, but had a healthy group of Chinese students that we talked to. One guy, we didn\'t get his name, had long-ish hair, wore a Nirvana T-shirt, and asked me immediately if I was Christian. I said sorry, no, and we proceeded to talk about American music, futbol and the city of Harbin, switching back and forth between Chinese and English. He was duly impressed that Wang Li Hong (a famous pop singer in Taiwain) had graduated from my school and that he and I had the same Chinese teacher. Then I had a bit of a conversation, this time all in Chinese, with a girl from Germany, going to school in Vienna, but doing a year of study abroad in Harbin. Being fairly jet-lagged still, I didn\'t stay to talk to the handful of Australians, the Bulgarian, a couple brits, a few Russians and the other Chinese who all happily were squeezed in, two to a chair, into this little bar.